If the tools are bad, nature's voice is muffled. If the tools are good, nature will give us a clear answer to a clear question.

Computer models of the climate....[are] a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs.

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

You have this world of mathematics, which is very real and which contains all kinds of wonderful stuff. And then we also have the world of nature, which is real, too. And that, by some miracle, the language that nature speaks is the same language that we invented for mathematics. That's just an amazing piece of luck, which we don't understand.

Do not imagine that you have to know everything before you can do anything. My own best work was done when I was most ignorant.

The analogies between science and art are very good as long as you are talking about the creation and the performance. The creation is certainly very analogous. The aesthetic pleasure of the craftsmanship of performance is also very strong in science.

Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.